Spaghetti alla puttanesca - including how to hide your courgette and tomato glut

What glut?

Admit it, you've been growing veg in your garden due to lockdown, hoping that if there was a longer lockdown that you could provide for the family with lots of fresh vegetables. Preserve and freeze any excess, to enjoy through the autumn and winter.

Perhaps you put a couple of courgettes in your garden or in large pots, you may also have planted a few tomatoes too.

These are now beginning to ripen and you may be getting to the point where you need to start hiding the veg in dishes or you get the comment, "not again" when you serve a meal.

We put in 6 courgette plants, each a different variety and have at least 12 tomato plants in a very tiny back garden and they have turned into triffids or even into "Audrey II" from Little Shop of Horrors. The tomatoes are now above the 8-foot poles we put in (7 foot once in the ground). They are heaving with fruit and just starting to ripen.

I'm still needing organic box deliveries, and try as I might to not pick a box with courgettes in it, inevitably the box contents change just after cut-off, so I'm having to get creative.

My daughter and I take it in turns to cook lunch and are normally based around gluten-free pasta, Barilla pasta is great, so is Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury's. It was my turn today, my daughter's currently working on a sewing project so she's working upstairs. I wait to see if I get a message on my phone whilst cooking with a guess as to what I'm cooking, she is an expert of predicting what I'm cooking from the aromas wafting up the stairs. Today, she was spot on.

Spaghetti alla puttanesca

This is also known as "slut's pasta" there are different variations, this is my "go-to" recipe for a quick lunch and I've always got the ingredients in the store cupboard or fridge.
To understand the history of the dish and why it's got the slang name, Wikipedia explains it's evolution and differences depending on the region.

I put the pan on, ready to cook the pasta, tipped out the rest of the packet of spaghetti into the pan, without properly checking the quantity of pasta. I then discovered that it was not enough for 2, so that's when I decided to add some finely cut courgettes at the end to bulk it out. I couldn't be bothered to get out my spiralizer, so I cut into fine julienne by hand, courgettes cut in this way are known as courgetti.

You can add the courgettes if you have them, but that is extra to either extend the pasta, add extra veg or hide some courgettes and tomatoes.

Ingredients (serves 2)

large pan boiling water
salt
spaghetti for 2

For sauce:

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 small tin anchovies, drained
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
2 large tomatoes, diced
2 tbsps capers
3 tbsps black pitted olives, sliced across into 3
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsps chopped fresh parsley

1 courgette cut into narrow strips or spiralize it. (Courgetti)

Method

Bring the pan of water to a boil and add the salt, when at a rolling boil, add the spaghetti, stirring to make sure the spaghetti is properly dispersed in the pan.

Put a wide saute pan or frying pan over medium heat, add the olive oil and add the anchovies, crush them with the back of a wooden spoon as they heat and they will melt into the oil. Add the garlic and chilli flakes and fry for one minute. Add the chopped tomatoes and the olives and capers and gently fry until the tomato starts to collapse, season with black pepper. This is now ready, turn off heat until pasta is cooked.

Drain pasta keeping some of the water. Turn back on the heat under the sauce, add the pasta and courgetti (if you are using this) to the sauce and toss well, add a splash of the cooking water to the pan to loosen the sauce, sprinkle over the parsley. Toss together for another minute, the courgetti should have started to wilt slightly, it is now ready to serve.

Enjoy